Mumbai: Aditya Birla Capital Advisors Pvt Ltd., the private equity arm of the Aditya Birla Financial Services group, has acquired a minority stake in Alphion India private Ltd. by investing ₹ 95 crore from its first fund, the company informed through a press release on Tuesday.

Alphion, a subsidiary of United States (US) based Alphion Corporation, develops and manufactures optical fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) access systems, subsystems and integrated photonic devices, used in broadband architecture.

Explaining the rationale for the investment, Bharat Banka, chief executive officer (CEO), Aditya Birla Capital, said, “Apart from India, where we expect encouraging growth prospects with investments in broadband and data services infrastructure, Alphion is also positioned to capture customers in other emerging markets."

As per published research and internal estimates, the global market for passive optical network (PON) equipment is about $4 billion, growing at 20% compounded annually, the company said in the release.

The current Indian market for PON equipment is estimated at about $300 million and is expected to grow rapidly as service providers are in the process of rolling out FTTP services across India.